


Wonderful Lies

by IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, One Shot, POV Gellert, Summer of 1899
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21535342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis/pseuds/IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis
Summary: Albus spends the night for the first time - and the last.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	Wonderful Lies

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Bastille’s _Another Place_. For once, a one shot I’ve written actually ended up tracking with the song that inspired it.

Gellert was helping Bathilda clean up after dinner when Albus arrived. He was becoming such a fixture that he didn’t even knock anymore – he just walked in the front door.  
“Gellert?” he called from the front hall.  
Bathilda laughed. “Go on. I’ll finish up here.”

Gellert tried to walk casually out the kitchen, but once he was clear of the door he dashed towards where he knew Albus would be waiting, and swept him up with a kiss.  
“I missed you!”  
Albus laughed. “It’s only been since yesterday.”  
“It has been a very long day. I hardly knew what to do without you.”  
“I know. I got your many, many owls.”  
Gellert shoved Albus playfully. “As if you didn’t keep me up all night with your own owls.”

“So?" asked Albus. "What did you think?”  
“About which part?”  
Albus’ eyes flicked towards the kitchen door.  
“Shall we take a walk?”

**********

Gellert loved walking with Albus in the evenings. This had come first, before anything – bouncing ideas off of one another, laughing and arguing and sharing new ideas that the other person had not thought of before. ‘But what if…’ and ‘No, I’m thinking…’ and ‘That’s interesting – do you suppose…’ interspersed with the occasional ‘Don’t be absurd!’ Somewhere along the way, Albus’ ideas and opinions had become indispensable. Gellert had resisted the idea – he didn’t like depending on anyone – but he finally had to concede that he was never going to reason in exactly the same way now that had spent time with Albus.  
This night, after more than an hour of picking apart several key parts of Gellert’s strategy to institute wizarding rule, they found themselves in the cemetery. Gellert walked over to the Peverell grave and sat on it, and Albus followed him. 

Gellert took Albus’ hand.  
“Stay tonight?”  
He had taken to asking every night.  
“I don’t know – I can stay long enough for us to take care of one another, but then I should go home.“  
‘Take care of one another.’ Make each other come, he meant. Gellert had long assumed that Albus was bashful or perhaps squeamish – that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about what they were doing. It occurred to Gellert now that what Albus was saying was more accurate than any more profane way of describing the time they spent exploring one another’s bodies. He hoped so, anyway. Though Gellert would have liked to have been the object of Albus’ care for more than some hurried fraction of an hour on any given day.

“Please, Albus. Stay.” Gellert had not pushed it before but having Albus spend the night was becoming important to him.  
Albus looked at him carefully, then looked down at their intertwined fingers. He looked back up at Gellert. “Gellert, I –“  
He sounded hesitant. He was almost certain to say no.  
Albus looked down and sighed. “Ok, yes. Tonight I can stay.” He looked pleadingly at Gellert and added, “but don’t think this means –“

Gellert kissed Albus before he could say any more. Gellert didn’t want to know what it didn’t mean. It was enough to know that Albus would be in his bed all night long, for the first time. He couldn’t say why he wanted it so much. Having a room to himself - privacy - had been one of the best things about no longer being at Durmstrang. But privacy was a nonsensical concept when it came to Albus. There was nothing he wouldn’t share with him – his thoughts, his feelings, his body – and now his bed.

**********

Sex with Albus was no less intense than conversation with him. Sometimes the sensations became overwhelming and Gellert had to close his eyes, but he tried to keep his eyes on Albus – every feeling was magnified simply by looking at him – by the thought, ‘It is Albus who is making me feel this way.’ Perhaps his favorite part was at the very beginning, teasing one another with gentle touches, rubbing against one another slowly, kissing one another first here, then there. A fire building with agonizing slowness.  
Then again, there was something impossibly hot about taking a wizard so intelligent and powerful and reducing him to a thrashing, inarticulate mess. Between the two of them, getting come positively everywhere, until they were gasping for breath and unable to say much more than, ‘That… was…’

Usually, they weren’t able to take quite so much time with one another as they did this night. Usually, Albus cleaned up quickly, kissed Gellert lightly, and walked out leaving Gellert smelling like sex in an empty bed.  
Not tonight. Tonight, they had taken the time to play, to learn more about each other’s bodies, to touch places that had gone untouched, to kiss places that had gone unkissed. And now Albus was still there – Gellert could hardly believe it. He rolled onto his side facing Albus and touched him – his shoulder, his chest.  
Gellert kissed Albus. “You’re really here.”  
Albus smiled. “I’m really here.”

“I wish we could do this every night.”  
Albus pulled Gellert closer and pressed his lips against Gellert’s shoulder.  
“One day, we’ll leave Godric’s Hollow, and then we will do this every night.”  
“And wake up together every morning.”  
“And wake up together every morning,” Albus agreed.  
“And we’ll take on the Statute of Secrecy together.”

“You are going to put the world straight one day, Gellert.”  
“We are. You and I together.”  
Together. Gellert couldn’t wait. He didn’t have enough of Albus’ time, attention, heart – not now, but one day… He lay there in silence imagining life with Albus somewhere else – Geneva, perhaps? Where would they go? Everywhere. They would go everywhere.

“And in the mornings, we can study the Hallows.” Albus’ voice seemed to come out of nowhere. How long had they been laying there silently?  
“And in the afternoons, politics.”  
“Hmm. No. We will take care of one another all afternoon. We can do politics in the evenings.”  
All afternoon. Gellert began to think about all the things they could do for one another given a couple of hours or more _every day_.

“And here I was thinking we were going to sleep in a moment. You are beginning to make me excited all over again.”  
“Well, we have time for it. I’m here all night.”  
Here all night.  
Gellert reached down between them.  
“Oh – “ Albus moaned softly.  
One day – one day this would be a typical night for them. Gellert did not know how he was going to survive the wait.

**********

Gellert woke first in the morning. He and Albus were facing one another, and Gellert took the opportunity to study Albus’ face more closely than he ever had before. He could spend every morning studying this face and not tire of it. He thought about the changing expressions on Albus’ face after the first time Gellert had kissed him, first startled, then fearful, then happy… then determined, right before he kissed Gellert back. He loved Albus so much. 

Albus’ eyes opened. His eyes flicked away from Gellert’s, as if he were looking at something just over his shoulder. He looked – apologetic? What could he possibly…?  
“I’m sorry Gellert – I shouldn’t have –“  
He looked not merely sorry – he looked – heartbroken. And a bit distant, and –  
No – no, please, no  
“You – aren’t coming with me when I go, are you?”

“Gellert –“  
Gellert kissed Albus, to stop him from saying more.  
He leaned his forehead against Albus’.  
‘I love you,’ Gellert had wanted to say, but that would just make it worse when he left. However much time they had left – there would be no more promises. And ‘I love you’ was a kind of promise. It was bad enough that he had already made this promise to Albus in his heart – Albus didn’t need to know about it.  
No, there was only one thing to say.  
“We don’t have to talk about it.” 

Gellert needed to kiss Albus right now, to feel Albus’ lips on his, to reassure himself that Albus was still there, for now at least – but he needed not to kiss Albus more. He needed not to imagine a future – to not imagine other kisses which might never come. Maybe by tonight he could simulate forgetfulness, and kiss Albus again.

Gellert wanted to be angry, but he wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more at fault.  
It crossed his mind fleetingly that his pillows smelled like Albus. He wasn’t sure who was more at fault for that either. He got out of bed and began dressing. He tossed Albus’ clothes onto the bed.  
“Right. I should go,” Albus apologized. “It is my turn to look after Ariana this morning.”  
Gellert nodded. He turned away as Albus dressed.  
Once he was dressed, Albus stepped around in front of him and asked, “After dinner?”  
“Sounds good,” said Gellert, noncommittally. 

Albus looked at Gellert a long time, then stepped forward and kissed him desperately. For a couple of weeks, every kiss Albus initiated had felt like a goodbye. How had Gellert not noticed before now?  
Then, as if they had not just kissed each other breathless, but had simply met on the street, Albus nodded at Gellert and said, “After dinner, then. I look forward to it.”

Gellert watched Albus walk out of his room and close the door behind him, then he sat down on the edge of the bed. Waking up together had been a kind of promise, too. A promise that neither of them could keep. He knew better now than to ask Albus to stay all night again. And Albus, he imagined, would know better than to accept.

**Author's Note:**

> Consider the possibility that Albus and Gellert both knew very well that Albus was never going to leave with Gellert, but had agreed never to speak of it – were careful never to speak of it. Which would mean that…  
> Gellert was in perpetual pain over the realization that anything he had with Albus was temporary. And perhaps Albus was, too. When Aberforth made his self-righteous little speech, he had no idea the can of worms that he was opening.  
> The very unnecessariness of Aberforth’s line in the sand allowed Gellert to unleash his rage at the whole situation.  
> He couldn’t take out his anger on Kendra – she was already dead. He couldn’t take out his anger on Albus – even without a blood pact, he was still too in love with Albus to let himself blame Albus as much as he wanted to. He couldn’t take out his anger on Ariana – no matter how much her existence was to blame for the situation, it certainly wasn’t something she had any control over.  
> But Aberforth, by speaking up, for the first time made himself a legitimate target, and there was nothing, for once, to hold Gellert back. When Gellert told Aberforth essentially, ‘How dare you stand in the way of your brother and I’ he was speaking to Aberforth as a representative of everyone – not just ‘How dare you Aberforth’ but ‘How dare you Albus’ and Ariana, and Albus’ parents, and all the world, really. He was casting a long overdue Crucio at reality.  
> Which is a long-winded way of saying… I consider this fic to be canon-compliant, even though it depicts Gellert and Albus as knowing they aren’t leaving together well earlier than the duel.


End file.
